Cybernetics and the human eye.
How can cybernetics be used to repair/enhance the human eye?
My Idea
My idea is to create an artificial eye that can replace an injured malfunctioning eye. This eye would be an improvement for multiple reasons. This new eye would also be a first step in improving human senses such as hearing or sight.
- It could repair near-sighted or far-sighted vision.
- It could enhance the eye by giving it properties that allow things like night vision.
- Allowing your eye to act as a microscope or telescope.
- Anything you could imaginge.
Background Info: Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the study of human controlled functions and the mechanical and electronic systems that designed to replace them.
Currently, cybernetics is commonly used to replace missing body parts and reconnect the human brain to unresponsive parts of the human body. An example of this is reconnecting the human brain to your legs after being paralysed from the waist down.
This technology could eventually be used for building things like a robotic exo-suit to creating full fledged cyborgs.
Background Info: Connections To The Brain
In the brain, your thoughts are transmitted by things called neurons through electric signals. Sometimes, some of these signals escape and that's where the electrodes come in. You can have electrodes implanted into your brain and these pick up those signals and send them to other electrodes.
Typically, there are two ways ways to implant electrodes.
- You can have an EEG (Electroencephalograph) attached to your skull. This method is easy and the least invasive, however, the skull can block out a lot of the signals, making this method less effective.
- The second option is to implant an electrode directly into the grey matter. This allows a more direct reception but it requires brain surgery.
Background Info: The Artificial Eye
In the artificial eye, an electrode connected to the brain will allow you to look around. The eye itself will not need to move, the spot that would look like the pupil and iris would be the only part that moves around the eye. Another electrode will control the functions of the eye such as giving the eye night visions or being able to see far into the distance. The third and final electrode will be connect to a camera that sends the pictures that the eye sees to the brain to recognize.
How it would work.
For this to work,the computer in the mechanical eye would have to be connected to the brain to send and receive signals.(When you connect computers to the human eye, it is known as BCI (Brain-Computer Interface)). You can accomplish this by adding electrodes to the grey matter of the brain and another electrode in the artificial eye. This would connect to the electrodes in the artificial eye and allow a you to control the functions of the artificial eye.
Pros and Cons.
Pros:
- You could have extremely enhanced vision.
- If you had a previous eye injury or de-function such as near sightedness
- You could not worry about blindness of any kind
- You wouldn't have to worry about injuries to the eye
Cons:
- The eye would require power
- You would need brain and eye surgery to implant the eye and electrodes
- The eye would have to be resistant to existing fluids in the human body